MTV Music Meter Tracks Social Media To Return To Roots

Who ever remembers the launch of MTV in the early 80s may wax nostalgic in learning that the network is returning to its roots. The slogan "I want my MTV" accompanied the latest Michael Jackson and Madonna music videos and certainly aided in the meteoric rise of these artists. This week with the release of the MTV Music Meter and its interface with social media, the parent company Viacom will showcase up-and-coming artists and bands that are most buzzed about on social networks.

Dermot McCormackDermot McCormack, EVP of Digital for MTV Networks says the difference between the MTV Music Meter is that is not a streaming service like Pandora, but much more interactive where you can drill down quickly and uncover artists daily. The functionality was built around discovery, sharing, consuming and interacting.

“We want to re-associate and new-associate the MTV brand with music,” McCormack said. “This is aimed at finding those artists who are rising fast in the social-media conversation.”

Using an algorithm that parses one million tracks per day, the MTV Music Meter provides a ranking of the most buzzed and talked about tunes as experienced by users of social media. For each artist in the ranking, the Web app provides music to purchase along with news, tweets and video. The platform also provides a "Pandora-like" functionality that surfaces links to suggestions of other artists.

(Note Jackie Evancho (above), the 10 year-old second place winner of this past year's America's Got Talent, the child that amazed TV audiences with her grown-up Operatic voice.)

In addition to the Web site, the MTV has be launching versions of the Music Meter for devices using Google's Android software and Apple's iPad and iPhone, at the end of January. Internet radio will be added in a subsequent edition.

“It’s not a simple tally of most Twitter mentions. It’s a little more complicated. It’s one that we tweak and it’s a bit black boxy. It’s not a streaming service, it’s not a download service. It’s a mechanism to discover new music and share new music,” McCormack said. “It’s not, hey, give me the most talked about artist on Twitter. It’s give me someone with velocity -- the input of this massive social conversation going on. It’s a curated conversation. It moves on a daily basis, frankly, the way the Web does.”

McCormack hopes Music Meter will become a go-to resource for both casual music listeners and the hard-core music aficionados wanting to keep abreast of the latest trends.

Time will tell if MTV's latest shiny thing will make the network as relevant on the music scene as it was back in the 80s. It will certainly will be a welcome change to some of the reality shows it has aired of recent date. . . Jersey Shore . . . just saying!

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